Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America Paperback - 1998

“I wish every city had a Geoffrey Canada” —President Bill Clinton
 
“Canada has never lost touch with the child within himself or the fears of the children around him struggling to reach adulthood in the violent streets of America.”—Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund
 
“Here is the role model, the griot, the nurturer, the brother who never left the ’hood because he keeps looking into the faces of the children and seeing himself there.”—Patricia Smith, Boston Globe

"The Harlem Children's Zone (is) an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children in a neighborhood where they were never supposed to have a chance. . . . The first part of my plan to combat urban poverty will be to replicate the Harlem Children's Zone in twenty cities across the country." —President-elect Barack Obama, July 18, 2007

"A beautiful story, simply told . . . [by] one of the best friends children have, or ever will have, in our nation." —Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace

"In this powerful new book, Geoffrey Canada explores the dangerous terrain in which today's adolescent boys mature . . . [and] shows how the combination of age-old urges and new cultural forces and mores create a volatile world for America's young men." —The Reader's Edge

"With vivid stories from his own childhood and from the boys he works with now, [Canada] provides a powerful account of what life is like for men and boys in urban America today." —Robin Browley, Creative Classroom

"[Canada] offers a smart, street-level picture of what's bad about an inner-city boyhood and, more impressively, also gives us some sound advice about the hard work necessary to remedy it." —Publishers Weekly

"Canada has emerged as one of this country's leading advocates for urban youth." —Elizabeth Mehren, Los Angeles Times


 

Geoffrey Canada is president and CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City, which President Barack Obama called "an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children." Canada has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and The Colbert Report, and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential people of 2011 for his work in child advocacy. He is the author of Fist Stick Knife Gun.